A Grave Tree (17 page)

The sweetness dropped out of Sandy’s voice. “This is ridiculous. I’ve had enough. You three,” she called, gesturing to a trio of men in furs and animal skins, much like the ones Mark had seen before in this future when they had hiked up the hill to the lookout. “Take him to the cell with Jake. We know where the room is now. We don’t need his help. Elliot and Leo, you’re with me.”

By the time Mark had been returned (not too gently) to his feet and prodded forward, Sandy and two men in jumpsuits were down in the river by the door into the dam.

The men who now surrounded Mark with guns were the ones in animal skins. They were looking at him and whispering among themselves. Their eyes were a bit wide and their movements jerky. They did not have guns.

They started climbing the hill along a well-worn path that would presumably lead them to the top of the dam. Halfway up the path, one of the men fell into step next to Mark. “Where did you go? We waited through the winter. First the Light and then you. We went to Four-Valley Gap to look for you. But you weren’t there. The rest of our people are camped out near here, but Graham is worried that it’s not safe. People are coming and going. People who work for her.” The man gestured back in the direction from which they came. “But she has food. She’s feeding us in exchange for our help on the river diversion.”

Mark tried to follow what the man was saying—the man who seemed to think they knew each other. River diversion? What was the man talking about—another dam? Or were they actually diverting the water to somewhere else (which would explain the lack of water in the river channel)?

“Did you find the valley?” the man continued. “The place where we can plant? The people are waiting, but it’s getting close to planting season.”

Mark shook his head. This man was looking for Warrior Mark. The Mark he had seen in the woods a few hours ago. The Mark who was clearly very different from the Mark that he was. The Mark who had emphasized the importance of finding the fifth map.

“You didn’t find it?” The disappointment in the man’s voice was palpable, even to Mark, who had a hard time understanding things like that.

“No, I… I don’t know…” Mark trailed off. Things were happening too fast. He needed to think. If these men knew him, perhaps they would let him go. But where was he going to go? Sandy had said Jake’s name. She had said put Mark in the cell with Jake. Maybe Jake would know what to do.

“I need to talk to Jake,” Mark said. “In the cell. I need to go to the cell and talk to Jake.”

The man cocked his head. The raccoon tail hat he wore on his head flopped slightly to the left. “Are you sure? That’s a bit risky. Letting you go here would be easy. But if you’re in the cell, I don’t know. We can probably still break you out, but her men have guns, and someone could get shot.”

“I need to talk to Jake,” Mark insisted.

The man with the raccoon hat regarded Mark with that appraising expression that Mark was used to. The expression he was pretty sure meant the person was questioning whether Mark was right in the head.

Mark grasped for a reason, a reasonable reason. Anything. He drew in a deep breath and then looked up to make direct eye contact with the man. “He’s the one who transported the Light. He might know where the Light is.”

The man hesitated, but shifted his gaze to the ground as if in thought. “Fine. But most of the men are working up at the diversion site. Jamie, Garth, and I are only on duty here until nine tonight, then you’re stuck with Leo and Elliot, who are her men. So you’re going to need to hustle if you want to talk to the kid and then get out. We could lose our jobs—or worse; she has a bit of a temper—so we’re going to have to make it look convincing. We’ll say you overpowered us. Doesn’t… your condition…” he said the word delicately, “mean that you can have superhuman strength if you’re angry, or something?”

Mark was pondering what the man could possibly mean by this when they rounded a corner, and suddenly they were on the top of the dam. The view of the river and Coventry Valley was spellbinding, and Mark nearly teetered with the vertigo of it.

Trees filled every inch of ground that was not water as far as the eye could see. No wonder the animal-skin people were having a difficult time growing food. There was no land that wasn’t treed. The mountains rose up steeply on either side of the dam, and Mark turned to look behind him at the Luna Reservoir. It was no longer the rippling expanse of blue water that he’d seen in pictures, but rather a shallow, murky pond surrounded by cracked mudflats that smelled of decay. Several sections of the reservoir looked like they’d been dug up, with mounds of dirt and rock lying in piles next to deep holes. A couple of the rocks looked a bit like tombstones, and Mark gave a shudder and had to look away.

The men led him to a door, and they began to descend a dark stairwell into the depths of the dam. At the bottom, they set out along a dimly lit cement hallway with pipes running along the ceiling and sides, and doors leading left and right.

“You sure everything’s okay?” the raccoon-hatted man asked. “You seem… different.” He’d been eyeballing Mark’s body.

Mark was quite aware that Warrior Mark was much slimmer and more muscular than he was, but he hadn’t thought it was that obvious. He sucked in his stomach for a few seconds, but then had to let it out as he found it hard to breathe.

He tried to affect a tone of authority. “I’m fine. The Light and I have just been working on preventing the great rift.”

Raccoon-hat stopped short. “You’ve had contact with the Light?” His eyes had now shifted to a narrowed position and his eyebrows were sort of folded together. Mark was fairly sure that if he had the opportunity to compare the man’s face to his stack of yellow cards, it would be very similar to the one with the label “suspicious.”

“The Light left me some instructions. I’ve been carrying them out,” he said, marveling at his apparent new capacity to lie. He felt Digby squirming around in his backpack.

This appeared to satisfy the man, who resumed walking.

At the end of the hallway, they came to a cluster of doors surrounding a small common area. The man unlocked one and gestured inside. Mark entered, and Raccoon-hat followed.

Jake sat on a chair behind a desk in a small office room. He lurched to his feet as soon as he saw Mark. Mark tensed and tried to shake his head without shaking his head so Jake wouldn’t give them away. He turned to raccoon-hat man; he’d tried to pick up the man’s name by listening to the other men talk to him, but evidently they were not a chatty bunch. “How long do I have?”

Raccoon-hat man looked at his companions. “I’d say about fifteen minutes or less. They’re distracted right now looking for this special room, but knowing the boss lady, they won’t be for long.”

Mark nodded, then waited. They were going to close the door and leave him alone with Jake, weren’t they? If they didn’t, this would all have been for naught. Of course it might be for naught anyway. What was Jake going to do other than provide Mark with a tiny shred of companionship? Although right now, Mark had to admit that having an ally of sorts, other than a rat (not that he wasn’t starting to appreciate Digby), would be quite a relief.

The man in the raccoon hat gave Mark the once-over one more time before finally drawing the door closed. “Just knock on the door when you’re done,” he instructed.

“Where did you go?” Jake said. “Sylvain nearly lost his mind when he discovered you were gone.”

“I wanted to see the dam,” Mark said, trying not to let his voice go all stubborn—his usual tone when having to justify his behavior. Jake didn’t think he was Mark the Warrior. Jake thought he was Mark the guy with Asperger’s who had just wandered off in the woods like a recalcitrant toddler. He took a few big gulps of air. “Where are the others?”

“We were almost to the docks when we noticed you were missing. Sylvain convinced us we should go back and look for you while he went to the other future to look for Abbey and Caleb. So I was going to transfer him through the futures and come back. But when we got to the docks it was like they’d been vandalized. Most of the wood had been ripped up, and they weren’t working.”

“While we were trying to figure out what to do, some men in jumpsuits ambushed us. Russell and I held them off for as long as we could with rocks. But Sylvain wasn’t even fighting.” A muscle in Jake’s jaw twitched as he said this, and Mark noted that his facial features seemed rather tight. “Russell actually killed a guy and then vanished—just like you did a few months ago when you hit that guy with the spear. Then Sylvain ran off, leaving me alone. I was a pretty easy mark after that, so they collected me and brought me here.” Jake gestured at the door. “Do you know those guys?”

“No,” Mark said.

Jake arched one of his dark eyebrows.

Mark’s head swam in a murky sea of challenges he was unused to dealing with. How was he going to convince raccoon-hat guy to let Jake out too? Or should he just abandon Jake here? And go where? What would Warrior Mark do? Unfortunately, Mark had no idea. He’d been hoping that Jake, as a person without Asperger’s, would know what to do, but now he was pretty sure that Jake was just as scared and confused as he was.

Mark knocked on the door and waited.

“What are you doing?” Jake asked.

Mark ignored him and knocked again, harder this time, but nobody came to unlock the door.

The office had a small window that looked out into the hall and common area. A turquoise blind hung shut over the window. Mark tweaked it open a bit and peeked out into the hall. Sandy stood talking to raccoon-hat man, waving her arms in the air wildly.

Mark did not need his little yellow cards to know that her face was angry. Very angry.

“Are they going to let us out?” Jake persisted.

Mark drew back from the window, and the blind fell back into place with a slight clatter. “I really need to find the fifth map,” he said.

*****

Abbey’s breath came in jagged starts as they raced down the familiar musty tunnel that she had escorted Jake down only a few weeks before. Mark had all the flashlights in his pack, so they once again navigated by the light of Ian’s lighter.

The police cars had matched them turn for turn as they’d bolted through the darkening streets and alleyways. Even here in the tunnel, where the blue and red lights no longer glowed behind them, Abbey didn’t feel the slightest bit safe. The silvery digits of Dr. Ford’s artificial hand were seared in her mind. Had she hit him with the axe she threw that night?

She stumbled along, Dr. Ford’s hand grazing her back with every step. He was not behind her. But in the bleak tunnels, it was easy for her mind to get away on her.

“What did you do?” she demanded of Ian.

“I was walking along, minding my own business, and they raced past me. I saw the direction they were going, and saw the passenger in the car, and figured they were heading your way, so I took a shortcut through some yards to get to you first. What did
you
do?”

She’d done a lot of things, she supposed.

“Here!” Ian said, stopping at the same door that Abbey had found using the Pythagorean theorem four weeks ago. How much use was her math to her now? Not much. She had a feeling that all equations trying to explain everything that was occurring would be circular and unsolvable.

Ian flung open the door and they proceeded into the basement of the library with the sliding shelves.

“Wait,” Abbey said as Ian was about to head down the hall to the stairs that led to the main floor of the library. Kasey’s censure hung heavy in her mind.

“What?” Ian said. “We have to hurry.”

Abbey shook her head wildly. “Where have you been? Where are we going? There are only docks here. Who’s going to use them? Shouldn’t we go back to the stones at the swamp? Isn’t there another tunnel that leads there?”

Ian paused. “I don’t think the stones are working anymore. I barely made it through.”

“So how are we going to get home?” Abbey heard the crackly edges of her own voice. The precariousness of their dependence on the stones, on magic—or
witchcraft
, as Ian called it, which she still didn’t believe in—was becoming all too stark.

Ian shook his head. “I don’t know. But we have to get out of this future. I’m pretty sure Dr. Ford isn’t going to give up.”

He took off before Abbey could ask anything more. She had no choice but to follow.

The library was quiet, and Kasey was thankfully nowhere in sight as they stole up the stairs to the second floor and down the hallway to the rooftop garden. Darkness had fallen in earnest as they burst out onto the green roof. The goats eyed them uninterestedly as they wandered about, white ghosts against the stark black sky. The docks pulsed with the energy that Abbey had become used to, and for some reason, that energy felt stronger than she remembered, as if the small wooden platforms were calling to her.

The statue from the Square of the Mother occupied the center of the green roof, and the goats milled around it.

Abbey approached the statue.
Quinta Francis Merry, 1782-1853
.
Founder of Coventry
.
Home, Hearth, and Center
.

Center. “
Find the center. Find your center
.” That was what the first card from Ian had read. And Simon had emailed to say that the ancient texts indicated that the center was moving. The center.

Abbey had assumed that the card referring to the center was just some witchcraft yoga sort of mumbo jumbo. But it occurred to her that in the Coventry City of the present, the statue occupied the Square of the Mother, which was at the center of the pentagram that marked the locations of the docks and stones. Even though the geography of this future Coventry City was not totally familiar to her, she was pretty sure the library was not in the same place as the Square of the Mother. Kasey had said before that the statue used to be at the train station.

The glimmer of blue and red lights racing along a nearby street caught her eye. How had Dr. Ford found them so quickly? Wouldn’t he have expected them to head the other direction, to the stones?